Alisa Smith

There is no honor among thieves, they say. Perhaps it should not be surprising that when thieves are recruited into a nation’s secret service, there may be a shortage of honor among spies, also. This is what happened during World War II when the Allied powers were desperate for any means to defeat the Nazis,…

When there was a manhunt for California bank robber Bill Bagley, who escaped from prison in British Columbia, Canada, the 1932 headlines advised to “look for the woman” if the cops had any hope of finding the man. The headlines themselves were in quotation marks, referencing an already established trope in detective fiction. Cherchez la…